Posts by Sometimes an Engineer 12 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jan 2019
Windows XP? Bah, far too modern.
A few years ago (but still post-win10 release) I came across a CNC router that still ran on DOS. You had to upload the router code to the machine via a 5 1/4 inch floppy.
And the best part was that DOS was a bolt on upgrade. The router actually took punch cards and the modification added a DOS computer that just bypassed the punch card reader part.
I've worked with engineers who were permanently in shorts and flip flops. Only problem was that this was the uk and they'd be like that even if it was below freezing and snow on the ground, so their sanity was questioned. Upon investigation it turns out that lack of sanity is no barrier to being a good engineer.
Interviews and meetings with new people are definitely harder online. I've been both the interviewer and interviewee for Teams/Zoom interviews.....and it is a whole different kettle of fish. The social rules that run normal interviews no longer apply, and things are very different.
For example you mentioned greetings/social engagement. For in-person interviews that is mainly done during meeting "setup". So you'll do the greetings at reception, then have a bit of a chat as you wander to the meeting room, and then maybe a bit more as you wait for the second interviewer to turn up. And only after all that is the meeting "setup" and ready to go. For on-line meetings you skip all that, you click the link and it's all setup already and you are straight into the main agenda.
And I completely agree on the looking away from the camera.....but it's very difficult not to do as the interviewer just gets no context on why the other side is looking away. For myself I often have a notepad/second screen to take notes on or to display ancillary material that I can refer to. In a in-person interview I would very much approve of such things as it shows preparedness of the candidate and that it is a two way information exchange. But if I'm not there in person, I cannot see that. They may well be taking notes on a second screen or they may be running Minecraft, who knows? And lets not get into godawfullness of laptop camera positioning and the difficulty in getting yourself properly in frame (or how I acquire a few extra chins from most camera angles)
So old in-person interview social etiquette cannot be the same as on-line etiquette.
Unfortunately its something I've seen before, and all my colleagues have seen the same in multiple companies. The most common type of harassment seen is bullying or just generally very unpleasant behaviour from people senior enough that the company won't take action. It's very rarely overt (eg overly aggressive behaviour or shouting), more things like not listening to people's concerns, misinformation (or even gaslighting), ignoring expert contributions, favouritism, "forgetting" to supply information etc. Small things that are really damaging if they build up too much over time.
I work in hi-tech fields (not "tech", but physical technology) and work with very highly skilled people, so if things get bad enough people just walk. It's not worth the fight, and our skills are in demand. However, its not a good reason for leaving and puts people in bad situations. If you're leaving because you've found a better job, great. However, if you're leaving because you just can't take the company culture anymore you're in a much worse situation. I've seen many people leave without a job to go to, which is risky even for highly skilled people. There is no guarantee that you will be able to find an equivalent job straight away, and people often get lower quality or inappropriate jobs because they need to pay rent/mortgage/whatever and they cannot wait for the "right" job.
And there's not much you can do really. The courts? Well generally people need something more immediate, and cannot wait months/years for a solution (as well as all the time, stress and money needed for the courts). Dealing with it internally? If that was working we wouldn't be posting here. Post a negative review on glassdoor? It may give a bit of catharsis, but its not an solution to the problem.
With respect, yes we do.
Barring the 737-Max, which was applying changes to an ancient grandfathered design, the design of new airplanes including their automation is one of the most rigorous design process out of any industry. Only the nuclear industry is comparable to the same safety standards. The design and implementation of automation in new designs, including software, goes through an insane amount of detail and checks. When people ask why airplanes manufacturers don't implement some piece of fancy technology (which must be easy right?), the answer is normally that they need to prove it safe first which is a much longer process than it would be in any other field.
And rightly so. I can't think of any other industry with such a good safety record, and it's a hard earned safety record. The industry as a whole has been at the forefront of safety for the past 50 years, and is something other industries and sectors look to learn from. The failures of the 737-max just show that complacency and resting on your laurels is deadly.
I'm actually surprised about the flat screens. My local tip has a special area for monitors/TVs/whitegoods where they try and repair and re-use anything thats worth it, as a lot of items are still very useable if a bit dated. Though I think this is run by some local group in conjunction with the council, so not sure how widespread it is.
And I'd be quite annoyed too, because you're teaching them bad practice. You think trying to teach your students to never make mistakes is going to stop them making mistakes? Because that's never going to happen. You show me someone who never makes mistakes and you'll be showing me a liar.
In real world engineering we accept that mistakes will happen, so we design systems to mitigate and catch those mistakes before they become problems, and have further processes in place to correct problems once found. Say in my field, any engineering drawing will have two different checkers, we'll have design reviews, we'll have prototypes. And after all that when the product is actually made we'll have several rounds of verification testing as well.
Good software is similar. While obviously you try and get it right first time, you won't. So you write unit tests, you have peer code review, you have offline testing etc. And then at the end you should also have a QA/QC process to check it's all working. Obviously this is all boring stuff but if you want good product this is whats needed, not just relying on your developers/contributors to never make mistakes.
I would beg to differ. Recently (within past year) I've been seeing increasingly sophisticated phising emails (mainly for personal banking admittedly). Some of them have the templates and logos nearly identical, and to top it all off they even have the disclaimers saying if you don't believe an email is genuine, don't click the link. The only reason why even realize these are not legitimate is because the spam filter caught them as having incorrect headers.
Of course this is not helped by the banks telling us not to click links in emails..... and then nearly all their official emails having big shiny links to click on.
Disagree some of this:
2. Yes there is something stopping you from claiming benefits from your company, and it's called IR35. Allowing your company to pay any expenses whatsoever is banned if you are working within IR35. All income from a contract is assumed to be personal income and cannot go to your company, and then you pay both employers and employees NI on that personal income (as well as normal income tax). If you want to pay yourself pension, you can only do personal contributions, there is no allowable method of paying employer contributions (despite the change requiring all companies to offer a workplace pension with a minimum 3% employer contribution).
Also, nice benefits like expenses away from home are disallowed under IR35. So if you were an employee and working away from home for 6 months (eg in a hotel mon-fri), you could claim this back from the company you work for, and the company would account for it as an expense. You cannot do that under IR35 (as effectively you don't work for a company, despite being taxed as if you do.)
So overall I agree with the previous posters. You cannot treat contractors as employees for tax purposes, but not for employment rights purposes. One or the other (and I don't particularly care which)
"MatLab does only one thing well: it visualises data in a way that no open-source tool does."
It took me a while to like python (and there are still things I dislike) and it is only numpy/scipy/pandas that really shine for me, but now it's my go to for quick data analysis. However if there is one thing I'd sell my grandma for, it would be for python to be as good as Matlab at visualizing data. That for me is where Matlab shines (that and simulink).
Of course I could just sell my grandma to afford a Matlab license, but then I'd have to use Matlab.
It's a shame you're getting downvoted so much, as there is a lot of truth in what was written.
At least in the UK, and amongst my EU colleagues and friends, Whatsapp is ubiquitous that any replacement needs to overcome a significant network effect. It does not matter if there are 10 competing apps, in fact that makes it worse; we are not going to all install 10 different apps, and then try and figure out which friend group communicates on which app.
I personally have several disparate friend groups (from university, from previous jobs, from social activities), and trying to move them all onto another messaging service is not going to be easy. Trust them or not, the UK survey statistics show ~80% of 18-44 year olds in the UK use WhatsApp (with the percentage dropping for the older age groups). Source: statista.com
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